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Free Stars: Children of Infinity - upcoming Star Control 2 sequel from Fred Ford's Pistol Shrimp Games

Strange Fellow

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Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
Now, the implication seems to be that they only did that out of courtesy to Ford and Reiche, and that they've rescinded that courtesy now that Ford and Reiche have turned out to be such dicks. It certainly doesn't seem like they were legally obligated to refrain from using material from the originals. Then again, Stardock could just be going out on a limb and banking on the assumption that Ford and Reiche won't follow up on the legal threats.
It doesn't make sense to escalate the situation in the hopes that your antagonists won't notice. This was done as a loud assertion that Stardock is legally in the right.
I'm sure you're right, although my contention wasn't that they wouldn't notice, but rather that the prospect of fighting it out in court would deter them. In any case, F&R responded in the worst possible fashion with their Kickstopper.
However, Stardock's justification for going back on their promise is flimsy at best:
Q: Why did Stardock really need to trademark the Star Control 2 alien names?

A: Star Control fans expect new Star Control games to have the Spathi, Ur-Quan, Orz, etc. We originally chose not to include them in Star Control: Origins in deference to Paul and Fred who asked us not to.

However, in December 2017, Paul and Fred posted:

2bf536f2-748a-4e82-b924-e8ff57fb7dcb.png


This creates confusion because Stardock alone owns the Star Control universe. That doesn’t mean it owns any lore or stories created by others. It just means that Stardock has the right to determine what is canon in the Star Control universe.
So originally Stardock was going to avoid original SC aliens. Then, F&R state that their game has no connection to Origins, and suddenly it has become paramount to prevent them from using said aliens. To protect their Star Control Extended Universe? Why they've decided just now to implement these aliens in their own game is anybody's guess, but to be quite honest I cannot see a more plausible reason than spite. No more free rides for the creators of "a 25 year old DOS game," if they can't behave themselves.
 
Repressed Homosexual
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From all I have seen, it seems to me that Stardock has every right to make Star Control the way they want, and that the creators are just butthurt of being has beens who sold their souls to pressure parents to buy overpriced plastic many times in order to pay their expensive mortgages, Porsche's and kid's college tuition, and butthurt that Brad is getting all the attention and not them. But that we supposedly owe it to them to give them our monies so they can express even more just how butthurt they are that no one takes them seriously anymore. I mean, tying characters in a videogame to plastic figurines that have a 1000% profit margin. Can't you see what great game designers we are? Sure that Brad guy kept making the same style of game we used to make for 25 years straight, but WE are the ones that should be praised, not him!

I mean come on "Look at how mean and callous he is, he has copied our greys!!!"... talk about ridiculous.
 
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Deathsquid

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From all I have seen, it seems to me that Stardock has every right to make Star Control the way they want, and that the creators are just butthurt of being has beens who sold their souls to pressure parents to buy overpriced plastic many times in order to pay their expensive mortgages, Porsche's and kid's college tuition, and butthurt that Brad is getting all the attention and not them. But that we supposedly owe it to them to give them our monies so they can express even more just how butthurt they are that no one takes them seriously anymore. I mean, tying characters in a videogame to plastic figurines that have a 1000% profit margin. Can't you see what great game designers we are? Sure that Brad guy kept making the same style of game we used to make for 25 years straight, but WE are the ones that should be praised, not him!

I mean come on "Look at how mean and callous he is, he has copied our greys!!!"... talk about ridiculous.
Yeah but what if they had a new type of gameplay in mind and this is now ruining progress?

Here, this is how it might be - in order to not tread on Activision's collectable toys, they would have SC with destructible toys! Each time you encounter an enemy, you pull out its representation replica ship and start picking it apart. Of course, it's not so easy, and the game has a timer for each action, so if you fail, you get shot!

(ships not reusable)

PM me to buy this hot idea.
 
Repressed Homosexual
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They made their bed as peddlers of bullshit. They can't suddenly claim "no we're hardcore gamers just like you now!!!"

It's like pharmacists who sell potato chips, soft drinks, lottery tickets and cigarettes, and yet pretend to be important health professionals protecting people's health.

They are realizing there is one thing that millions can't buy: respect.
 

Strange Fellow

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Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
What they should have done is add some salient stretchgoals to their kickstopper to entice the masses.

3 million - We will also sue Peter Molineux, because no one else was about to, and he's had it coming.

5 million - We will take Todd's lies to court!
 

Beastro

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What's sad to me is SC:O will be shit even if they use the origin races 'n stuff and we all know it, whereas there might be a chance of a true sequel to SC2 with Paul and Fred, but it seems they're more interested in brewing a fight with Stardock than actually making a game...

I just want a true to spirit SC3. :(
 

Spectacle

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Trademarks as a legal concept were originally invented so that consumers would be protected from buying counterfeit goods masquerading as a trusted brand. How did we go from there to any random cunt being able to buy a trademark at a fire sale and then fool consumers by legally stamping it on their counterfeit goods?
Stardock may very well be legally in the the right here, but this whole fiasco just highlights why the modern concept of "Intellectual Property" is a farce.
 

Zombra

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Off topic: I still think y'all are too hard on Star Control 3. Zarniwoop Beastro The puppets look bad and that's about the only valid complaint imo. Well okay, that and the K'Tang dialogue gets old. SC3 has a complex story featuring several original alien races with strong concepts and personalities. It's not the original writer but SC3's writers did a p good job, especially when they weren't rehashing the SC2 races. I replayed it recently and was impressed, I too hated it back in the day for not being SC2 but it has plenty of merit on its own. The "true spirit" of exploring a quadrant, dealing with alien viewpoints, piecing together a mystery, building alliances and resolving disputes, it's all there. I know the hardliners will never give SC3 another chance, but honestly it's too bad if you let nostalgia rage ruin it.
 
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What they should have done is add some salient stretchgoals to their kickstopper to entice the masses.

3 million - We will also sue Peter Molineux, because no one else was about to, and he's had it coming.

5 million - We will take Todd's lies to court!
10 million - The obligatory MCA stretchgoal. We will team up with Chris Avellone to destroy Obsidian Entertainment and Feargus Urquhart personally in the court.
 

Spectacle

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Off topic: I still think y'all are too hard on Star Control 3. Zarniwoop Beastro The puppets look bad and that's about the only valid complaint imo. Well okay, that and the K'Tang dialogue gets old. SC3 has a complex story featuring several original alien races with strong concepts and personalities. It's not the original writer but SC3's writers did a p good job, especially when they weren't rehashing the SC2 races. I replayed it recently and was impressed, I too hated it back in the day for not being SC2 but it has plenty of merit on its own. The "true spirit" of exploring a quadrant, dealing with alien viewpoints, piecing together a mystery, building alliances and resolving disputes, it's all there. I know the hardliners will never give SC3 another chance, but honestly it's too bad if you let nostalgia rage ruin it.
Star Control 3 was a pretty fun if derpy game, not a classic like the previous game but bad either. The main problem was the angled 3D view of the starship battles, which made it much harder to actually aim than in the top down 2D of Star Control 1/2.
 

Strange Fellow

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Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
Off topic: I still think y'all are too hard on Star Control 3. Zarniwoop Beastro The puppets look bad and that's about the only valid complaint imo. Well okay, that and the K'Tang dialogue gets old. SC3 has a complex story featuring several original alien races with strong concepts and personalities. It's not the original writer but SC3's writers did a p good job, especially when they weren't rehashing the SC2 races. I replayed it recently and was impressed, I too hated it back in the day for not being SC2 but it has plenty of merit on its own. The "true spirit" of exploring a quadrant, dealing with alien viewpoints, piecing together a mystery, building alliances and resolving disputes, it's all there. I know the hardliners will never give SC3 another chance, but honestly it's too bad if you let nostalgia rage ruin it.
Star Control 3 was a pretty fun if derpy game, not a classic like the previous game but bad either. The main problem was the angled 3D view of the starship battles, which made it much harder to actually aim than in the top down 2D of Star Control 1/2.
Completely unrelatedly to this thread, I just found out that SC3 was developed by Legend Entertainment. :?
Loved their text adventures.
 

Beastro

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Off topic: I still think y'all are too hard on Star Control 3. Zarniwoop Beastro The puppets look bad and that's about the only valid complaint imo. Well okay, that and the K'Tang dialogue gets old. SC3 has a complex story featuring several original alien races with strong concepts and personalities. It's not the original writer but SC3's writers did a p good job, especially when they weren't rehashing the SC2 races. I replayed it recently and was impressed, I too hated it back in the day for not being SC2 but it has plenty of merit on its own. The "true spirit" of exploring a quadrant, dealing with alien viewpoints, piecing together a mystery, building alliances and resolving disputes, it's all there. I know the hardliners will never give SC3 another chance, but honestly it's too bad if you let nostalgia rage ruin it.

I got nothing against SC3. It was a weird, fun flashback to 90s cheap kids TV shows watching an LP of it years ago.

I was just struggling to find a way of saying I wanted something to some after SC2 in it's old spirit.
 

Infinitron

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Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
The thing about Star Control 3 is that people seem to complain about it for the wrong reasons.

The main reason to dislike SC3 isn't the playdoh-looking alien portraits or the bad MIDI music or the copy-pasted dialogue for the home quadrant races, even though all those things might be bad.

The main problem with SC3 is that it's a non-game. Within the first few hours, you'll have a fleet of Chmmr Avatars that can win any battle and all you'll be doing is auto-warping from star to star and talking to aliens. Without the space survival mechanics of Star Control 2, all that's left is a dialogue clicking simulator.
 

Zombra

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Star Control 3 was a pretty fun if derpy game, not a classic like the previous game but bad either. The main problem was the angled 3D view of the starship battles, which made it much harder to actually aim than in the top down 2D of Star Control 1/2.
I'm 22 years late to tell you this but you can switch to 2D view with a single keypress, F5 I believe
rating_oldman.png


The main problem with SC3 is that it's a non-game. Within the first few hours, you'll have a fleet of Chmmr Avatars that can win any battle and all you'll be doing is auto-warping from star to star and talking to aliens. Without the space survival mechanics of Star Control 2, all that's left is a dialogue clicking simulator.
Uhh. And in SC2 the player flagship wrecks shit out of all challengers and the rest of your fleet just sits there. That leaves the pew pew lander sequences as what makes SC2 great?

I was just struggling to find a way of saying I wanted something to some after SC2 in it's old spirit.
Honestly I think SC3 does capture much of the spirit. It's not a bullseye but the gameplay arc is substantially the same, the mix of humor and seriousness is the same, and the critical thing - figuring out what's up with all the aliens - has the same tone but with new mysteries. Aside from smearing Reiche's blood and semen on it, what more could you really want?

Another new game that captures that spirit would be welcome of course. Just want to go on record that SC3 actually did a good job as "a real Star Control sequel".
 
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MRY

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What they should have done is add some salient stretchgoals to their kickstopper to entice the masses.

3 million - We will also sue Peter Molineux, because no one else was about to, and he's had it coming.

5 million - We will take Todd's lies to court!
10 million - The obligatory MCA stretchgoal. We will team up with Chris Avellone to destroy Obsidian Entertainment and Feargus Urquhart personally in the court.

This is a Kickstopper. The $10 MCA stretch goal is that they will finally get him to sign the non-compete forbidding him from making RPGs.
 

Unkillable Cat

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Since talking about SC3 is actually more enjoyable than internet lawyering, I'll join in.

Star Control 3 is garbage.

As much as I want to leave the discussion at those words to prove the point, there are autists reading this that may sperg themselves to death because they can read text, but they can't read The Signs.

(Now you know how much fun can be had from internet lawyering.)

As Zombra mentions SC3 has some good points, like how some of the space races are memorable (the K'Tang, the Doog and the DakTakLakPak immediately spring to mind) and the Harika/Yorn society is interesting. But as Infinitron also mentioned the music is terrible (not even elevator muzak can be this bad), the writing of the non-Crux races is atrocious and that there's no game in there, besides the ship-to-ship combat... and even that is crap. (More on that later.)

Sadly it doesn't stop there. I'd like to say right now that I place no blame here at the feet of Legend Entertainment, they did the best they could with what they had... the least of which was time, from what I recall hearing. All the blame falls squarely on Accolade. Ironically Accolade made and released SC3 for the same reasons we're seeing the current legal tiff taking place - Toys for Bob held rights to Star Control that they shouldn't have according to industry norms at the time (where the publisher takes all and owns all) so steps had to be taken to remove TfB from the picture. First step: Make a Star Control game without them. Second step: Make a Star Control game without any content related to them. (That's what the aborted StarCon game from 1998 tried to do, among other things.)

Another problem is that Legend was being tasked to follow a tough act: Create a sequel to one of the greatest games of the past five years, a game that defies genres as well as expectations, widely praised and loved by almost everyone who's played it. It's like approaching Rush in 1977 and asking them to compose a follow-up album to Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon.

SC3 has two casts of characters: Pre-established characters returning from SC2, and the new guys written by Legend. None of the old cast followed their established character traits from SC2, leaving the new guys to carry the game by themselves... and you know you're in for something when that line-up includes feudal space squids (with English accents), dumber-than-bricks dogmen and uppity fungus people.

In SC2 you start with an ill-equipped flagship that you can upgrade to your heart's content, making it suitable to your playstyle and situation. It can be a cargo hauler, deep space exploration vessel or a veritable gunboat that tears apart every other ship in the game, but losing it means Game Over, so it's a gamble. In SC3 you get a standardized 'pea-shooter' ship that is pants, forcing you to rely upon the other races to win the battles. It may seem like a minor shift, but it's a noticeable one: It means that if one considers SC2 to be a RPG* then SC3 most certainly isn't.

SC2 has you firmly in control of things - you are the Captain, you call the shots. Barring a few "We surrender"-choices you are free to make whatever choice you want and the game keeps on ticking. As the game is on a timer, the goal of the game is finding an optimal solution to the game, not the 'right' one. The timer also gives a sense of urgency and means that every choice has a consequence. Spend too much time gathering resources and you won't have time to do the main quest. Spend too little time and you're not ready to do it and will be playing catch-up.

SC3 has ICOM. ICOM tells you how you should play the game and removes control from you when you don't do as it says. If ICOM thinks you did something wrong, it's Game Over. This makes it infuriating to deal with the Owa, for example, as one wrong move there ends the game due to ICOM. There goes that feeling of significance. Unfortunately the game takes that theme a step further. Embedded in SC3 is a feeble attempt at a colony simulator. Every allied race has at least one colony that is supposed to be managed so that they contribute resources to your efforts. What it all boils down to is you building gas stations at (hopefully) strategic locations so that you don't get stranded in the ass-end of space somewhere... and even if you do manage that stupid feat, the game will happily wait for you while you spend years of in-game time building a colony in the nearest system and waiting for it to generate enough fuel to get you going again. So much for the urgency.

Then there are the bugs. In terms of bugs SC2 is virtually flawless. It takes effort to crash the game (in fact I've only ever seen that happen once). SC3 can strand you in Dead End-situations if you make as simple and innocent a choice as visiting some races in the wrong order. Go off the beaten path and the event script may not trigger, leaving you sitting there wondering what should be done next without a clue that you're hosed. At the same time there are a few events that are non-issues. A notable oddity in the SC3 line-up are the Ur-Quan, who made for terrific antagonists in SC2 but are not only allies in SC3, but sub-servient ones at that. Eager to serve, happy to assist. You nod and go along with it because you want their Dreadnoughts, so whatever. But if you build more Ur-Quan colonies than the original one, a sub-plot appears where the Ur-Quan rebel and half of their colonies "switch over" to become Kohr-Ah (uh-huh). This "quest" cannot be resolved, the Kohr-Ah will always be there to pester you. So how do you deal with this? You just don't build any Ur-Quan colonies. This is Bad Game Design 101, you don't spend time and effort implementing something into your game, then have the game inform the player that it's counter-productive to use it.

SC3 added 14 ships (IIRC) and the only fun ship in the entire line-up is the Harika/Yorn Ravager due to its unique game mechanics. At least half of the other ships added are mine-layers, and/or simply borrow elements from unused ships, leaving three ships that are different in any way. The Harika/Yorn ship treats crew like fuel (meaning it technically has three weapon systems) and has a strange but powerful main weapon, the Exquivan ship builds a wall around itself that it uses to block shots and ram enemies (and is single-handedly the most dickish ship to fight against in SC3, especially under computer control) and the Vyro-Ingo's ramming weapon sounds cool, but it doesn't even work all the time. Are the ships balanced? Fuck no, once I got my hand on the (upgraded) Doog ship I tore through every fight in the game with ease (save the last one, in which I used the Syreen instead) and in each of those fights I only used a single Doog ship, sitting quite still from where it warped in. That's how unbalanced the SC3 ships are.

Star Control 3 can console itself on one point: It's not a case of Betrayal! on a scale like Ultima 9 is, but it's still a kick in the teeth for those that loved Star Control 2, and utterly meaningless to everyone else. And it is garbage.

*About Star Control 2 being considered an RPG... what the fuck, RPG Codex? Have you lost your minds? At best the game has aspects of it, but SC2 purposefully defies genres. Get real.
 

ArchAngel

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:Flash:

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Can you own a copyright to (the idea of) an alien race, its name and likeness, in the USA? Or only to a whole work - a book, game, a picture?
AFAIK people who used Hobbits in their work have been taken to court by the Tolkien Estate, which is why the preexisting elves and orcs have become standard fantasy fare, but Hobbits haven't.
Similarly, TSR has sued people/companies for using D&D monster names.
 

Cael

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From what I understand, stardick has the right to the NAME "Star Control". Basically, Stardick bought "Star Wars", but didn't/couldn't buy Jedi, lightsabres, TIE fighters, X-Wings, Star Destroyers and Darth Vader, or "KOTOR".

Fred and Paul retained control of "KOTOR" and everything in it, but lost the right to use the name "Star Wars".

Now, stardick is trying to grab control of "KOTOR" and everything to do with Star Wars because, since they own the name and therefore they must own everything else as well.

But the worst thing about the whole saga is stardick trying to act like the good guy and talk about "respecting this and respecting that and being tolerant of this and that" (sound familiar?) but when they run up against some resistance, they get ugly fast (again, sound familiar?). Nasty pieces of shit like that should be shut down and stomped on as much as possible.
 

:Flash:

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Here are the court documents for the case:
https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/6239751/stardock-systems-inc-v-paul-reiche-iii/

The most interesting part is Attachment 1 from July 16th, where Ford and Reiche dumped all the original agreements. Those are simple proof that Wardell is full of shit. He claims Ford and Reiche weren't the developers, the documents clearly state they are. He says they never owned those copyrights, the documents says they do. He claimed no rights reverted to them, the document says all the rights granted for the development of Sequels revert on April 1st, 2001.

The next document by Wardell's Lawyer says that those documents further strengthen Wardell's case, because they prove that Accolade wrote the manual to Star Control, the manual mentions the alien names, and therefore the alien names now belong to Stardock. I'm no lawyer at all, but this is as flimsy as it can get.
 

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